By LARRY NEUMEISTER (Associated Press)
NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump has arranged a bond to back up an $83.3 million jury award given to writer E. Jean Carroll in a defamation trial from January regarding her rape accusations against Trump, his attorney said Friday when informing the federal judge overseeing the trial that they are appealing.
Attorney Alina Habba filed documents with the New York judge to show that Trump had obtained a $91.6 million bond from the Federal Insurance Co. She also submitted a notice of appeal to indicate that Trump is appealing the decision to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
These actions followed Judge Lewis A. Kaplan's refusal to postpone a Monday deadline for securing a bond to ensure that Carroll, who is 80 years old, can receive the $83.3 million if the decision withstands appeals.
The bond posting was necessary to postpone payment of the award until the 2nd Circuit can make a ruling.
Trump is under financial pressure to set aside funds to cover both the judgment in the Carroll case and a larger one in a lawsuit where he was found responsible for lying about his wealth in financial statements provided to banks.
A New York judge recently declined to stop the collection of a $454 million civil fraud penalty while Trump appeals. He now has until March 25 to either settle or obtain a bond covering the full amount. In the meantime, interest on the judgment continues to grow, increasing by about $112,000 each day.
Trump’s attorneys have requested a stay on the judgment pending appeal, cautioning that he may need to sell some properties to cover the penalty.
On Thursday, Kaplan wrote that any financial harm to the Republican front-runner for the presidency results from his slow response to the late-January verdict in the defamation case resulting from statements Trump made about Carroll while he was president in 2019 after she claimed in a memoir that he raped her in spring 1996 in a midtown Manhattan luxury department store dressing room.
Trump strongly denied the claims, stating that he didn’t know her and that the encounter at a Bergdorf Goodman store across the street from Trump Tower never took place.
In May last year, the jury awarded Carroll $5 million after determining that Trump sexually abused her in the 1996 encounter, although it rejected Carroll’s rape allegations, as defined by New York state law. Part of the award also resulted from the jury’s conclusion that Trump defamed Carroll with statements he made in October 2022.
The January trial was only about statements Trump made in 2019 while he was president. Kaplan instructed the jury to accept the findings of the previous jury and to determine solely how much, if anything, Trump owed Carroll for his 2019 statements.
Trump did not attend the May trial, but briefly testified and regularly sat with defense attorneys at the January trial, although his behavior, including disparaging remarks that a lawyer for Carroll said were loud enough for jurors to hear, led Kaplan to threaten to remove him from the courtroom at one point.
